Symbiosis
by adlyb
Summary: (Unofficial) Sequel to After the Fire, But Before the Flood. After years wandering an apocalyptic world together, Klaus and Elena must decide what they mean to each other when they no longer need each other to survive.
1. Part One

**Symbiosis**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Pairing: Klaus/Elena

Warnings: Unhealthy relationships/power dynamics, explicit violence, sexual content, bloodplay, basic vampire stuff

Rating: M

A/N: Unofficial sequel/companion to my behemoth, _After the Fire, But Before the Flood_. For Kimbuhlay, who requested fluff/domestic Klaus/Elena, set after the end of the fic. Perhaps this is more of an extension than a fluff piece, but this is what happens next (probably). I did try.

* * *

 _Klaus does not touch her like his possession, his hostage or his plaything. He touches her like a man who almost drowned, and found breath at the last minute. When he speaks, it is_ _her_ _name he says, over and over, a deluge she cannot tire of._

 _Elena, Elena, Elena._

 _He says her name, but she hears what he really means._

* * *

After, when they are lying tangled together, Klaus murmurs a secret into the skin of her neck.

"I almost gave you up."

Elena shifts against him. Her fingers twine with his, and her toes flex against his calf. She wishes she could look at his face, but he keeps it buried against her throat.

"You mean you meant to let me die in the sacrifice."

"No."

She waits for him to offer her more. She's used to waiting a long time with him, for the things that she wants ( _and the things that she doesn't_ ).

"Your witch friend… _Bonnie_." He says the name with great emphasis—like he feels compelled to name her for _who_ she was, not just _what_ she was. "She explained to me what was happening to you, when you were… experiencing the others."

He does not elaborate on what was happening to her—she senses that the technical explanation is not the point of this, and besides, she can always ask him later ( _no explanation he can provide for her will ever compare to the actual experience of living inside the minds of women long, long dead_ ).

Instead, he tells her something else, something worse, in its own way. "She told me that if I let it alone, if I refused to right the magic, then you— _you, Elena_ —would be consumed. Overtaken. All signs indicated it very likely would have been Tatia who would have emerged as the dominant personality, and you would have been… gone. Smothered like a flame under a glass."

The implication hangs between them. He was ready to let it happen.

She feels it like a keen knife twisted between her breasts.

 _I almost gave you up._

 _I almost let you die._

 _I almost left you._

She should be angry—furious, really. She can sense the emotion under her skin, ready to burst to the surface. Her heart races, a painful, galloping hammer against her ribs that Klaus can surely hear. The veins under her eyes sizzle and spread, making her vision film over in black and red. She fights to control her reaction to his words, and desperately finds that she _cannot_ —

—And it's more than Klaus's tacit admission that he'd almost _thrown her away_ after years and years together, where the one thing she could count on was that he would protect her, in his own way, and that he would want her—

It's that she's loved him. Taken him into her bed, into her heart. Her love has never before been not enough.

But then, she's never had much luck competing with the women who shared her face.

 _Why are you doing all of this? Is it because I look like a Petrova?_

 _Of course._

What chance had she ever had of beating Tatia in the wild of Klaus's heart?

Except, she is here, the living ( _sort of_ ) testament that he has chosen a different path. That he has chosen her. _Elena_.

She lets that knowledge settle over her, like the slow rolling lap of the waves on the beach, like a bell in a distantly remembered Basque cathedral, hypnotically tolling for no one.

Klaus holds her close, like he will not let her go, and despite everything, she feels utterly safe in his arms. Slowly, the quiet retakes her body, and her vision clears to normal. Elena waits for him to continue.

Long minutes stretch by, wrapped up in each other's arms, pressed against each other along the lengths of their whole bodies from shoulder to toe.

For all that Klaus likes to talk, for all that he has easy access to his anger and his wrath, he has never been able to express himself otherwise with ease.

The moon trails silver light over their feet. It strikes Elena that they could stay like this, literally forever, and Klaus may never venture another word if she does not help him say what he so clearly yearns to tell her. It's so easy for him to be cruel, to fill up every space with barbs and broken glass and ripping and tearing and blood and fire, but the moment he has something important to say, the words fail him.

Elena presses him, as gently as she knows how ( _she is not a gentle girl, has not been for so very long, but for Klaus—oh, she'll try_ ).

"You loved Tatia."

It's a statement, not a question.

"I did."

To her surprise, she feels no jealousy. Only a tenderness toward the man in her arms. _Jealousy_. They've always had to work around that emotion, she and Klaus. After all, it was no secret that she loved both Stefan and Damon, and that she always would. She understood only too well what it meant to love someone and have to go on with life anyway. She couldn't imagine what it would be like if moving forward meant also having to look into their faces every day. But then, she is not Klaus. Perhaps he is used to this.

"But you chose to save me," she murmurs, forging ahead. "You saved _me._ "

"Yes, when I had the choice, I did choose you." He laughs a little bit, and it's not a mirthful sound at all, but instead rather rueful. She feels the vibrations all through her bones. "I thought to possess you, once, Elena, but it seems we've gone the other way around. You've tied a tether to me, and I would not have it broken for anything. I belong to you, now, my sweetheart. _My dear one_." This last endearment he murmurs so quietly into her hair that she might mistake the words for breath. His words send hot sparks shooting over her skin. Her stomach flips, and her eyes sting. Klaus runs a finger over her face. His touch is so gentle, she almost cannot feel it. His voice is stronger when he speaks. "Cruelty may be your nature, but I hope that you will not be cruel with me."

Elena catches his hand. "I won't be cruel with you, Klaus," she tells him firmly. She cannot deny what he has said. Cruelty _is_ in her nature. He's taught her that ( _no, she has learned it all by herself_ ). She kisses the palm of his hand. "I've chosen you, too."

He finally lifts his head, so that she can see his face. His eyes are very dark in the moonlight, but not as dark as once they would have appeared to her. She can see him quite distinctly. Every eyelash and freckle, the midnight blue glint of his irises, the faint red of his lips and the golden gleam of his curling hair. It's all there. He is realer to her than he has ever been.

It's not just because her newly vampiric senses can detect everything so much more clearly than before. No—it's something _else_.

She realizes that she's been living in a fog, these past few years. Ever since that awful morning, on the battlefield his family had made, where she had lost her old life and started her new one with him.

That fog is gone now, dissipated with the sunrise.

It's a new day.

* * *

They are so used to moving that, when everything is said and done, and nearly everyone they know is dead, they decide to keep going without ever exchanging one word on the matter.

That suits Elena just fine.

She takes a moment, before they leave, to pile some stones over Bonnie's grave. She wishes she could do more for the friend who loved her so, so much, but there are no flowers ( _yet_ ), and there is no granite to engrave. She knew those things so intimately once: the prosaic details of a funeral, the physical act of mourning. All of those things are gone. Her love will have to be enough, until such time passes that she can do something better to mark Bonnie's final resting place.

She leaves a marker for Katherine, too.

* * *

Maybe a couple of years ago she would have worried that she would never be able to find Bonnie's grave again once she left—a reasonable fear, given the way the earth has been rocked and reshaped down to its core—but Elena doesn't feel any of that. Somewhere very deep inside of her, so deep she is only barely cognizant of it, she can still feel her tie to this place.

It's a place of beginnings. The place where her face was first begat, and the place where she, Elena, was finally freed from her legacy. She feels Klaus's hand in hers, his grip patient and comforting and sure, and thinks it is also the place where _they_ began anew, the place where he chose her for herself rather than for whom she resembled.

This place has left its mark on her, more permanent and indelible than anything.

* * *

She knows she'll always be able to find her way home again.

* * *

A/N: This chapter may undergo some small changes in the coming week, before I post part two. I'll leave a note here if I make any changes.


	2. Part Two

**Symbiosis**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing, except these words.

Pairing: Klaus/Elena

Warnings: Unhealthy relationships/power dynamics, explicit violence, sexual content, bloodplay, basic vampire stuff

Rating: M

* * *

She is very, very hungry when they leave Bulgaria. Klaus leads her south, searching out their first humans. He won't do a thing to find them for her, though. No, he wants _her_ to look, to find, to hone the new abilities that she has.

It turns out that there is so _much_ to learn about becoming a vampire. Elena feels like there shouldn't be—she's been living with one since she was eighteen, feeding him and caring for him and keeping him strong. And yet there is, an endless stream of mystifying new information that she cannot find the language to express, coming at her from every possible angle. Klaus is eager to teach her, unrelenting in the discipline he forces upon her while she relearns the world in each new way.

"You may be the last vampire I ever make, Elena," he tells her the first evening when she can hardly focus for the burning pain in her throat and the searing ache in her teeth. "You may be the last, but I also intend for you to be the finest."

It's entirely frustrating.

And yet… and yet… with each turn of the moon, her mind is a little clearer, and the throbbing ache leaves her mouth, and settles in her heart instead. She begins to learn.

For three nights, they wander south and west, following her lead. For three days, they see no one else at all.

Much to her delight, she never tires. She could walk forever, and her feet would never tire. The backpack she still carries over her shoulder, filled with diaries and maps and vervain darts and the only change of clothes she has left, weighs nothing at all.

He makes her stop, every now and then, to close her eyes and strain her senses and tell him what she senses. Smells, and what they are, and where they come from. The taste of water in the air, or of fire, or the feeling like a thousand centipedes crawling over her skin that means lightening. Sometimes she has no idea what it is she senses.

Klaus crowds her, pressed up behind her, chin hooked over her shoulder, to murmur in her ear while she does her best to focus on her newly heightened senses. It's terribly distracting. How can she worry about all the new ways she's perceiving her surroundings, when there are also new things she notices about _him?_ He laughs when she tells him she has no idea, she can't focus on a thing. The sounds rolls all through her body, making her quiver.

What she wants is to pull him down, to make love to him under the moonlight, but she knows Klaus will not allow it until she's fed. He pushes her onward, gently but firmly. "After," he promises. "You need to keep your strength. It goes so quickly in the beginning. After."

They're just cresting a hill, covered in dead, yellow grass, when the wind shifts and Elena freezes.

The air tastes different here than it did in the Petrova ancestral town. When she sticks her tongue out, she can taste salt on the tangy warm air. And she can hear a rush and roar, too, when she listens, and beneath that, a low whip—Elena grasps and fumbles at these sensations, before finally, she realizes—"There's water nearby."

Klaus nods. "A few miles off, still, I think, but yes." He pauses. "The water is sending all sorts of different smells, do you notice that?"

She nods. "I think—I can smell the dirt in the water, and there are plants there, and fish, and I can hear the rocks rattling in the riverbed, and I can _feel_ the pulse of the current and there's something else, something…" Her mouth waters. "Something delicious."

"That would be the people, love." He cocks his head, listening. Even now, his senses are so much sharper than hers. "They're following the river."

She inhales, pulling in as much air as her lungs will hold. "Do they always smell so…?" She gestures vaguely as she trails off.

"Tantalizing?"

She swallows, and her throat is too tight with hunger for her to speak.

"That's the hunger making them smell so tempting." He smiles, just the barest upturned corner of his mouth. It's a small, private smile, like he is enjoying this very much. "You're still so new. Your body's pushing you to feed, as often as possible, and the scarcity of adequate prey is making the hunger worse than it should be."

A hot gust of wind brings the scent of the humans nearby even more strongly into her awareness. She tenses, ready to follow her instinct and race forward, but he grasps hold of her hand, gently, but firmly enough that she can't break free without his consent.

"It wouldn't do for you to lose your mind to the bloodlust the moment you glimpse your quarry," he chides her. "I'll never have the opportunity to teach you anything if you lose your head, and there just aren't enough humans about for you to develop into a ripper, amusing though that might be. No time like the present to learn some self-control."

She tugs at his arm, only half listening.

He makes her walk, rather than run, down the hill, their hands linked like lovers taking a stroll under the moonlight. Only they know what _else_ they are. Wolves in the night.

They make it over the next hill, and find a finger of a river splitting off from the rest, streaming over a broken cliff into a phosphorescent sea that shines like a black opal in the moonlight.

Six people have made their camp near the bank of the river, well away from the edge of the cliff. Her eyes pick them out easily, man and woman, big and small, fair and dark. She lifts her nose into the wind, and she can smell how tired they are, how they have only just washed for the first time in weeks. A deeper inhale, and she knows which of them has been sick only recently, which are close blood relatives, and which are sleeping with which.

Two of the women wander away from the rest. Elena can barely detect the scent of something hanging between them—emotions or hormones, the little invisible things that could tell her so much more about the relationship between the two if she were only experienced enough to decipher the information. She stares after them for a moment before turning her attention back to the rest of the group.

A man still down in the camp cuts himself. The winds carries the tang of blood, and Elena streaks forward before she can even think.

Klaus stops her with a hand on her shoulder a mere five yards from where she started. She tries to twist out of his hands and launch herself toward the bleeding man, but Klaus's grip is like iron.

He cups her jaw and physically redirects her attention to two of the women who have just wandered away from the rest.

"A predator will always stalk the prey that's separated from the herd," he tells her.

"You don't know what the humans down there will do when confronted with a vampire, and it takes only one sure hand to fell you."

"What if the prey stay together?" she asks as her eyes trail the two women. She can hear them speaking to each other, a low murmur in the night. She's surprised they speak English.

"Then the predator finds a way to separate them." He pushes her toward the women. "But tonight, it seems, we won't have to. Come."

They wait until the women are well away from the rest of their group before revealing themselves. Elena's fast to snatch up the smaller, pinning her bird-like wrist behind her back and smothering her startled shriek with a palm pressed over her mouth.

Klaus has no need for force. He simply compels the other woman, as easily and thoughtlessly as breathing. "You're alright," he tells his captive quietly. "Be calm, and don't make a sound, for me, hmm?"

The woman visibly relaxes. Any fight there might have been in his captive leaks out of her.

Elena knows what it's like to be caught in that hard blue stare, to feel thought and desire leech out of her bones. She notes, now that she is trying to see how it's done, the quiet, sure voice Klaus uses when he gives his commands—the _will_ and _intent_ behind it, swallowing those of the woman he compels.

She turns her own captive to face her, and feels it the moment she locks the other woman's gaze with her own. "Don't scream." She musters all of the authority she can, and to her surprise, she can actually _feel_ the magic working. Her hands shake when she draws the dark hair away from her captive's—her prey's—neck. Half of her is afraid that the woman will break through the compulsion; half of her is afraid because she knows that she will not.

Her fangs slice through the woman's neck like a knife cutting through egg yolk—for just a moment, there is the barest hint of resistance, and then it is gone. The film bursts, and hot blood spurts into her mouth.

And it's glorious. Absolutely, electrifyingly glorious.

Elena realizes as the blood gushes down her throat that she's been hungry for years. For her whole life. She's been starving, worse than she ever even knew, and this is the first true taste of satiation, oozing in a pulsing wave over her tongue, down her throat, coating and slicking her teeth and lips and tongue like an overripe strawberry bursting in the heat, like a slow, slow trickle of life, time stretching like honey between the lap of each wave—

Klaus tears her away from the woman's throat. Elena growls, and reaches for the woman again, but Klaus will not let her go. Without Elena to hold her up, her knees buckle, and she collapses onto the grass with a soft crunch.

He turns to the other woman, the one he had drank from. She stands with a hand clamped over her neck, her stare wide and distant. Still compelled.

"Tell the others this one is injured," he orders her. "Tell them an animal attacked her. Go, now. Before she bleeds out."

He grabs Elena and takes her away. He is so much stronger, so much older and faster, that she cannot resist him, even though she wishes that she could. The smell from the blood still swims in her head, and she wants to tear herself away and chase after it more than anything.

When he stops, they are miles and miles away. No trace of that group of wanderers lingers in the air, and she is not certain she could find them again this night. Without the scent of them, her heads clears. The fire leaves her limbs, and her gums ache.

It occurs to her that she nearly killed that woman. If Klaus hadn't interfered when he had, there would have been nothing left of her but a husk. She hears the echo of her body hitting the grounding, crunching the grass, crunching like broken bones, broken glass, ringing in her ears. She's done a lot of terrible things, since her parents died. Worse things still since the world ended. But she'd never done something like this.

She's never forgotten herself before, not even for a moment. She's never been just a monster.

She falls to her knees and vomits up everything she's just consumed. Her eyes water as she wretches, and she doesn't know if she's crying from shame or fear or if the tears are just the ones she never let herself cry when she was just a sad, angry girl who lived with death so long it became a comfort.

Klaus reaches out and brushes her hair from her face.

She used to picture him when she thought of death.

His touch is a comfort, now, too.

* * *

A/N: Drop me a review to let me know what you think, or find me on tumblr over at livlepretre


	3. Part Three

**Symbiosis**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words

Pairing: Klaus/Elena

Warnings: Unhealthy relationships/power dynamics, explicit violence, sexual content, bloodplay, basic vampire stuff

Rating: M

* * *

They make their way through the broken spine of Europe so, so slowly. She cannot move during the day, so each day they find somewhere safe to bed down.

Klaus is extremely careful about these places. He will not accept any home that seems too fragile, any room with threadbare curtains or collapsing roof. Instead he prefers the caves along the seam of the Balkans, deep and dark and safe.

Their first night in one of these caves comes a mere two days after her first, nearly disastrous, hunt. Her eyes sting sometimes when her mind brushes against the memory of that night, but she's decided to bury those feelings deep. The only way is forward, and she is determined to go.

She is very hungry.

The darkness within the cave has a weight and a pressure to it, different than the dark of night. The sensation dredges up memories of the night her parents died, of the ice cold water at the bottom of Wickery Creek, rushing in, drowning her in the crush of freezing, total blackness.

If Klaus catches a hint of her unease, he doesn't comment. She's been tense and flighty since they fed the other night.

He sets about lighting a fire, something he does with the kind of ease that always sets her off in flights of fancy about what his life had been in the long centuries before she knew him. "There were caves like this where I grew up," he tells her.

"These caves?" she asks, frowning.

He smiles ruefully, but keeps focused on the fire. "Not these caves."

"You're from here, though, right? Or near enough?" When she says it, she feels like she should know differently, know more specifically—

"You knew the answers to those questions just ten days ago." His eyes flick up to her and back down to the work at hand. "I'm glad you don't anymore, actually. It makes things more interesting if you don't know absolutely everything about me without my having said a word to you about it, don't you think?"

She notices he hasn't answered her question. Once, she might have badgered him, but she's long since grown used to the way he leaps around when he doesn't want to dwell on something.

Elena crosses her arms in front of her chest and looks away from him, toward the mouth of the cave. "I've always found you interesting," she admits, studiously not looking at his reaction.

Klaus doesn't say anything, but she can sense his satisfaction. She can remember a conversation, years ago now, one dark night in an empty house in Guadalajara.

 _You thought of us, like this, even before our little reunion, didn't you, Elena? When you were all safe and warm in your bed, you thought of what it might be like, to let me in._

It doesn't take Klaus long to get the fire going. The flames set shadows dancing over the rough cave walls, the quick, sharp movements reminding her of something… Something like the shape of the women they had hunted, the ones she was so ready to devour. The shapes and figures dart against the corner of her eyes, the way something living might freeze and run, freeze and run, under a predator's eye, triggering the need to turn, to chase—

— _She sees her dark-haired victim standing in the silvery light, fear like a ripe sweet cloud around her, and her blood, dark and_ living _, pouring from her neck like nectar from an open flower—_

Elena stands and paces while Klaus works, building the fire. The shadows flit over his hands, his shoulders, crackling and wild.

She's on him before she really knows what she's doing, dragging him deeper into the cave, away from the maddening flames, tricking her eyes into seeing things that aren't there. She shoves him against the wall of the cave and mashes her mouth against his, and he lets her. Tears at his shirt and his hair, rakes her fingers over his shoulders, wild and hungry and _needing_ this, to distract her, to replace this terrible yearning within her, anything. Her fangs snag his lip—when had they even dropped?—and then he is snarling into her mouth, flipping them over so that she's the one crushed tight between the jagged rock behind her and the lean, perpetual strength of Klaus's body, a strength more sure and enduring than rock or steel or ocean.

He peels her shirt over her head, and her back scrapes and bleeds and heals and scrapes and bleeds and heals against it as she is ground back into the stone, a cycle that crests and lulls like the pulse of her blood, the pulse of desire that starts low in her belly and fans out like a flame to her center, to the spot between her thighs where Klaus has his thumb, circling, circling. He's undone the button and zipper on her jeans without her noticing, already has his fingers spread over her mound, where he can feel the heat and wet already dripping from her core. Klaus presses her, and she groans, her hands shaking as she pulls him closer, closer, lips trying to find his as she rolls and writhes against him, trying to get his fingers inside of her.

He ignores her efforts, intent on keeping control of this, she's sure. He nips at her neck, the swell of her breast. Anything more than a nip with those blunt, falsely human teeth, could kill her.

It's a razor's edge they're poised on as Klaus maps his way down her body, pressed tight against her as he deftly unbuttons her jeans and drags the skin-molding denim down her legs. She's not wearing anything underneath. From his knees, Klaus presses a kiss to the hollow of her hipbone, where the skin is soft and sensitive. He inhales hard against her skin, and traces his finger down the curve of her pelvis, down, down, to the apex of her inner thigh. When he looks up at her, his eyes are swimming pools of black, broken only by the phosphorescent glow of yellow wolf irises.

"Klaus," she calls. Her voice shakes. Fear, excitement, lust—she's swinging on a pendulum back and forth.

"Shhh," he calms her. "I won't harm you, I swear." He reaches out and squeezes the hand gripping his shoulder so hard her nails draw ruby dark blood from his pale flesh. He slings one of her legs over his shoulder and uses his free hand to hold her hip steady. "Shhh. That's my girl. Just relax now, hmm?" The sound is muffled, like he's—

The first firm stroke of his tongue runs along the whole length of her slit. Elena can feel her body opening to him, as he tongues her again in just the same way, except this time continuing the stroke until he reaches her clit, throbbing and swollen now. His fangs scrape against her flesh when he sucks her clit, but the sick rush of fear she feels—like falling very fast from a high place—does nothing to lessen her body's response to him, her own desire for him.

She can feel the power of the creature between her thighs, feel the energy and the strength radiating from him like a live wire. He could cut her with those teeth at any moment. The wall behind her is slick with blood, and she can barely keep her balance. Klaus holds onto her, and she clings to him as though she'll die if she lets go. Maybe she will.

Her orgasm catches her unaware, cresting over her like a churning tide, rolling up sand and debris from the deep with each pulsing wave.

Tears stream down her face. She's not sure why she's crying. Stefan had told her once that all of her emotions would be heightened if she became a vampire. Perhaps it's that. Perhaps.

Klaus regards her from his kneeling position between her legs. His eyes are somewhere in between blue and black—somewhere between wolf and man. He doesn't ask her what's wrong, or offer any solace. He's never been like that, and the familiarity of his lack of emotional regard is actually comforting.

He disengages from between her legs, and pulls her to standing. He cups her face as he kisses her. His tongue and teeth coax her mouth open, but she is the one who delves into his mouth, tasting herself in the dark recesses. _Herself,_ no one else.

"Feeling better now?" he asks.

"Yes." She meets his eyes, blinks away the remaining tears. "Klaus—how do you keep from losing yourself? To the vampire."

He shrugs. "One and the same, love. No need to worry about losing myself to what I am."

She presses her face to his chest. "The other night, I wouldn't have stopped if you hadn't made me. I couldn't have. It was like I was barely even me at all. It scares me."

"I think you've got it turned around," he tells her dryly. He twines a curl around his finger. "So perhaps you were a bit out of control the other night. You were a bit out of control tonight too—and it was fun, wasn't it?"

She pulls away from him. "You're talking about two different things. I don't _want_ to hurt people. Or at least, I don't want to kill, if I can avoid it."

He gives her a frankly pitying look. "That attitude will tear you apart."

"I mean it."

"Far be it for me to dissuade you. But have a care, Elena. Your self-control won't hold out forever. I won't let you destroy yourself with guilt when it fails."

"What does that mean?"

He doesn't answer her.

Ten minutes ago, he'd been the one on his knees before her, but that was only because he'd chosen to go there. As a human, as the doppelganger, she'd always been able to find some leverage for herself, some way to use herself and what she was as a means of achieving her ends. There was always some use for her, something someone desperately needed that only her blood and ultimately her consent could provide. But now she's lost that edge. As a vampire, how can she assert herself? She has only her love for him—a love he reciprocates, twisted and changed from what she would have once recognized as love. What good is love to bargain with a man like Klaus? She wonders how she will ever gain truly equal footing with him again.

"I missed you, these past few months," he tells her suddenly.

"What?" she asks him. She realizes her arms are crossed under breasts, a serious and defensive posture she took so often that last year in Mystic Falls.

He gestures vaguely at her. "When you were gone. I missed you, Elena. You're caught in a net, and you're struggling to get out of it. Not to run away—you won't run from me again, will you? Not when you're so used to standing your ground, for looking for some other way out. You'd much rather strike at me elsewhere." He smiles at her, a real smile.

She's totally disarmed by it. Her mouth hangs open, caught on a word she never finds. How can he be so mercurial? How can he stand so distant from her, that when she is contemplating her _worth_ , he can stand back and knock her over, with just the thing she secretly wishes he would tell her more often?

He closes the gap between them and hauls her up against him. "None of this matters right now, dearheart." He wraps his arms around her, and she cannot help herself. She returns his embrace. "We'll figure it out eventually."

Elena believes him. It's always her problem, the trap she falls into again and again, but she believes him.

Eventually, he leads her back to the fire, where he lays out a scavenged blanket for their bedding. She lies on her belly and lets him lick the blood from her back. His body covers her as he licks her clean, his tongue slow and thorough as he laves the sensitive skin of her back.

She can still see the flicker of movement from the fire, just out of focus, keeping her edgy. She closes her eyes and focuses on the feel of Klaus heavy against her. Like this, she can forget everything else, just narrow her world down to the heat from the fire making everything warm, on the feel of Klaus so close to her.

She rolls her hips, pushing her ass against him. He's already hard. It takes hardly anything at all to push aside their remaining clothes. And then he is inside her.

Like this, he feels huge. His chest, damp with sweat, presses against her back, and his arms cover her arms. He grips her wrists as he fucks her from behind, each thrust slow and deep. Everything narrows down to just the sensation of him between her legs, a hot, tight swell that comes and goes, comes and goes, no matter that she wishes he would just stay.

"Klaus—" She can't hang onto a thought, not with him prying something loose within her.

"There's my girl," he murmurs in her ear. He pushes her sweat-matted hair aside and sucks on the sensitive skin of her neck, the space between her jaw and her ear.

She bucks back desperately against him. "Klaus, don't leave—"

"Shhh." The command is just a puff of air against her shoulder, but she obeys it. He presses himself even closer than before, molding himself completely to her back, and begins to whisper things in her ear, things that are familiar but only half-remembered.

When she comes, this time, it is not so terrible as the last time. Klaus's presence behind her, solid and real, is something to hold on to.

Vaguely, there is a part of her that is certain the same must be true for Klaus. It must be.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please drop me a review if you're enjoying this :)


	4. Part Four

**Symbiosis**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words

Pairing: Klaus/Elena

Warnings: Unhealthy relationships/power dynamics, explicit violence, sexual content, bloodplay, basic vampire stuff

Rating: M

* * *

Despite his clear preference that she embrace her vampiric nature, Klaus is very careful the next time he takes her hunting. He never lets her hunt without his supervision, and never lets himself become distracted by his own prey while she feeds. He monitors her carefully, and talks her through it each time, so that she does not lose herself again to the seduction of the lazy pump of blood against her tongue.

"I didn't expect you to be so… _helpful_ ," she tells him one night after they've sent their dinners back to their campsite. It's the same every week, catch and release, taking just enough to sustain them until they find the next humans, and then compelling them at the end to keep everything quiet. Elena hasn't had much practice compelling anyone since that first encounter. Most of the humans they encounter don't speak English, so it's up to Klaus to speak to them. "I mean, you seemed so set against it when I told you I didn't want to harm anyone."

"No, I was set against you setting yourself up to fail. There _is_ a difference." They stroll side by side between crumbling buildings and ink dark craters in the earth. In several of the buildings, they have spotted campfires.

"So what is this then?" Elena presses. "I thought you'd be trying to teach me to let go and give in to my predatory instincts or whatever." All too clearly she remembers severed hands in her lap, and talk of murdering whole little families hours before she first let him into her bed. Klaus is worse than the animal she's so afraid of becoming.

"I'm giving you the tools you need to survive. If you were a senseless predator, all instinct and no thought, you'd be prey to the mob, liable to be caught and killed before you finished out your first decade. Don't think that that's changed now. Six can be a mob with the right weapons." He catchers her up and links his fingers behind her neck, so she is caught in the bar of his arms. Yellow firelight stops just short of the shadow that they stand in. "I meant what I said before, about meaning for you to be my finest vampire," he tells her quietly. "That's a high bar, sweetheart. I intend for you to overcome it."

She notices a spot of blood at the corner of his mouth, where she could lick it up if she kissed him. It's a struggle to ignore it once she notices. "The last time you took a vampire under your wing, you did absolutely everything possible to turn him into a ripper." Stefan's name lingers between them, unsaid, but heard, just the same. "How can I trust you not to do the same to me, as soon as you think it's a good idea?"

His smile is slow and easy and delighted, all pointed teeth and red mouth. "Oh, but we both know that won't be for a long time yet," he tells her. "And it would be rather an obstacle to rebuilding the human population if you kept culling the herd," he continues. His tone is flip, casual and distant as he describes humanity—all that is left of it—as mere animals. It catches her like a needle in the flesh. She can see through him completely when he talks like this. His words, the way he says them, the careless cruelty he weaves into everything—it's all pretense. If she waits through his preamble, he'll tell her something _more_. He always does eventually. He can never truly resist. Klaus leans forward, so his blood-stained lips are just barely touching hers. His mouth flutters against her, an almost kiss, when he tells her, just as she _knew_ he would, "And beside that… You seemed… so unhappy, afterwards. I wouldn't bring you through that again if I could avoid it."

"Thank you." She presses the words into his mouth.

She doesn't specify for what. There's too much between them to specify.

* * *

Klaus teaches her to hunt, but she knows how to run from instinct. And she's faster, sleeker than ever. The black and silver spangled sky, streaked through with streamers of violet and emerald and midnight blue, beckons her to run for the horizon, over the edge of it and into eternity.

In this new life, running is still what she likes to do best. She wishes there were more opportunity—Klaus is fast, but he does not like her to wander too far from his side, and the prey is slow, too slow for her to need more than an instant's stretch of her legs to catch it. And that's just the crux of it, the part she struggles with most: the catch is easy, the release impossible. Always, always it's a struggle to let go, and then to watch her prey, weak and blooded and confused, wander away. The urge to chase is always strong—

But Klaus's words always reverberate in her ears—she will be the _finest_ , and she _must_ have self-control to be that creature he envisages.

She wants so much to be that girl.

* * *

One night they stumble upon a gigantic building, low and sprawling, buried in a crater hundreds of feet deep in the earth. Except for around the periphery, the structure remains in tact, as though the earth had just swallowed the entire building whole. A large, circular skylight, a quarter of the windows smashed, glimmers in the moonlight.

"What do you think that is?" she asks him as they peer over the edge.

"Do you want to have a look?"

There was a time, once, when he took her up a skyscraper angled precariously toward the street, and she had almost fallen through a window. The trip down the side of this crater looks just as precarious as that climb up to his abandoned Manhattan apartment had been—

"Obviously."

They climb down the side of the crater, Klaus methodically picking his way toward the building while Elena scrambles behind him, rocks tumbling down to the pit in her wake.

When he makes it to the roof of the building, Klaus puts his hands around her waist and lifts her down to stand beside him. She fists his shirt in her hands and stands on tiptoes to look past his shoulder toward the skylight.

"Do you think anyone's down there?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Only the one way to find out." He pulls her after him to the broken skylight, where they teeter on the edge. "Are you ready, my dear?"

Elena wraps her arms tighter around his neck. "Yes."

He takes the step over the ledge, into thin air, and pulls her down with him.

Glass crunches under their feet when they land. The moon filters in, illuminating a rough circle around them. Once, she would have been blind in this light. Now, even the dust motes in the air reflect back a kind of light by which she can see.

They've landed in a wide, arced atrium. Long, deep halls extend in four points from where they stand—north, south, east, west, she is sure. Other skylights break the darkness at periodic intervals.

Elena wanders away from where they landed, toward the edge of the wide atrium, where a large painted metal sign details the building. She traces her fingers over the letters printed onto the sign. Some names, she recognizes. "It's a mall," she says, almost to herself.

"Hmm." Klaus steps up beside her to read over her shoulder. "It doesn't look as though anyone's been here of late." He fingers the fraying cloth at the hem of her shirt. "Care to shop a bit?"

They've done this before. Find a store turned topsy-turvy, so Elena can hunt through it all until she finds something she likes. Tonight's no different—they veer into luxury department stores, hop over fallen stone columns to paw through racks and racks of untouched clothing, still neat and pristine on the hangers. She holds up skirts and necklaces for Klaus's opinion, models dresses and hats and high-heeled shoes. She tries to talk him into a leather jacket, and laughs at the look on his face when she walks out wearing a particularly well-cut sequined dress.

When she gets bored, she wanders over to the front glass display case, where Klaus is examining the hair pins and jewelry. He pulls two wooden hair combs, carved with thorns and roses, from the case and arranges them in her long curling hair. Gently, he unties the sash behind her back, unbuttons and unzips and lets her dress slide in a pool around her ankles. She's wearing nothing underneath. He cups her shoulders, his large hands warm and firm on her bare skin, and turns her to face the long tall mirror by the front of the store.

"Look at yourself, Elena. What do you see?"

Her reflection startles her. Some things she notices immediately—the curling hair, without a flat iron for months now, the face only now beginning to regain the vitality she had lost while she starved.

The face that looks back at her is twenty-two years old. Older by far than her face has ever been, but strange, still, to look upon. And not just that.

Her skin is paler than it's ever been, the inside of her wrist like the side of the moon. She can see each scar Klaus has left her, jagged and silver in the night. She turns and watches the scars, roped around her neck and thighs and arms, flash and shimmer in the low light. She touches her wrists, her breasts. What need for jewelry when she has these?

And there's something else there. A certain hunger.

She's becoming a night time creature.

She's becoming a wild thing.

There are certain delights to be had in that.

They look together at their reflection, his arms entwined around her, his mouth a mere inch from the flesh of her throat, his scars on her body. But nonetheless, hard to say who owned whom.

After, Klaus sets her up on the countertop and kisses her for a long, long time.

The light changes to a deep gray, nearly indistinguishable from the black of midnight, but it is enough for Klaus to draw back and look toward the exit.

"Come, now. Dawn is coming."

She doesn't remember the last time she saw the light.

* * *

When they do choose a house to spend the day, Klaus always takes an exorbitant amount of time to check it over.

"Did I not once promise to shelter you from the 'cataracts and hurricanoes' and the 'sulph'rous and thought-executing fires'?" he asks her at dawn, one morning, when she is rolling her eyes at the way he insists on pushing the bed into the corner furthest from the windows.

"I don't think this counts." Elena grabs a pillow off the old bed and fluffs it. Goose feathers spray from the seams.

"You'll say differently if _you_ catch aflame. It's not pleasant."

"Please. Even if I did, I'd heal in like, fifteen seconds."

He pauses in his rearrangements, suddenly serious with her. "You're a rare jewel, Elena. The most precious, rarest of jewels. I won't let anything happen to you."

She doesn't know what to say to him, so she tosses the pillow at him, jumps on the bed while his attention is diverted and pulls him on with her.

All the while, she wonders. When did he become so sentimental… so vulnerable? It's like the dam has broken, and he cannot keep anything in anymore.

It frightens her, more than anything he's done in the years she has known him. She feels sometimes that he is like a stranger, open when she expects him to be closed, warm when she expects him to be cool. He is still cruel and quick to anger, to be sure, but somehow that seems less a part of him than it used to be. But how long can that last?

* * *

A/N: Please read and review! Seriously, it is always a GREAT motivator for me to update more quickly. Also, you can find me over at tumblr over at livlepretre . My askbox is always open to talk tvd :)


	5. Part Five

**Symbiosis**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words

Pairing: Klaus/Elena

Warnings: Unhealthy relationships/power dynamics, explicit violence, sexual content, bloodplay, basic vampire stuff

Rating: M

* * *

The changes they have wrought together—with her blood, and his ambition—are slow things, so much slower and smaller than the changes that started all of this.

Klaus had spoken about that ritual she'd gone through with as though it would fix everything right away. As though ripe apples and peaches would hang from the trees, and as though what rabbits and deer and people as remained would gather in again, to live in woods and towns and cities full of shining incandescent light like they once had. Elena feels foolish for thinking that now.

The humans that they find are still scattered. She's seen scarcely any animals bigger than a squirrel since she turned, and the trees remain bare, their limbs waving in the wind like ghosts.

"Are you sure that ritual did anything at all?" she asks Klaus, as a copse of dead trees comes in view.

He glances at her. "You can't tell?"

"Tell what? Everything looks the same."

"It doesn't _feel_ the same though, now does it? The air is warmer— Do you feel that? The morning sun gives off heat again." He squats down and places her hand to the ground. Elena kneels next to him and copies him. It's a process she's becoming familiar with, mimicking him and stretching out her senses to try to feel what he feels, see and hear and taste and smell as he does. Her senses are not as sharp as his, but they are close enough. "What do you feel from the earth?" he asks her.

She sifts her fingers over the dirt. "Nothing."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes—it's just—still—"

"The earth no longer heaves and rumbles. The speed of the earth's plates have slowed to the old pace." He smiles, just a little. "The planet's settling again, Elena, becoming navigable. The fresh water, such as there is, will remain _where_ it is."

"And the people will be able to find it and build next to it."

"Exactly." He stands and absently brushes his hands against his jeans, waiting for her.

She fiddles with a blade of grass. It's crisp and firm under her fingers. And maybe a shade greener than it would have been a few months ago. It's hard to tell, with her vision so much better now than it used to be. So many of these changes for the better that Klaus is alert to, and she cannot tell what is new about the planet and what is simply _new information_ , stuff she's only recently able to detect. So hard to be certain.

She lays down on the grass and spreads her arms out wide. Her dress rides up past her knees. Grass scratches at her thighs when she shifts. When she presses her ear to the ground, she can hear movement, deep within the earth. Insects, she realizes, moving around like life is normal. And beneath those sounds, the faint flow of water, creeping through xylem and up into every living plant.

Over her head, the stars glitter, diamond white against a black and violet sky. She can see so many more of them than she ever could before.

Klaus watches her watching the sky. He's silver in the moonlight, a different creature than the one she remembers from their sunny days together, their candlelit nights.

"Come to me," she calls. She holds her arms open to him, and if either of them are aware of a reversal in their positions—that Klaus comes to her when she reaches for him, something she had so pointedly refused him—neither say a word of it.

He slides into her embrace, and covers her body on the grass. There's a sense memory of this somewhere, like déjà vu. It fuzzes in the back of her mind as his hips sink against hers, and she wraps her legs around his waist. A stray thought. She lets it go. It slides back under her memories like a crocodile sinking into dark water, and she knows, vaguely, that it won't emerge again.

"I like this," she tells him. She locks her arms around his shoulders and pulls his mouth down to the crux of her neck. "I like feeling your weight on me."

He puffs a laugh against her throat. "Never imagined you'd admit to such a thing."

"What? That I like to feel you close to me?"

"You've always been such a runner." He twists her wrists above her head and pins them to the grass. "Never thought you'd tell me you like getting caught."

She leans back against the grass and studies him. There's a smile against on his lips, and a playful gleam in his eyes that she has seen turn vicious and deadly in a moment more times than she can count. He's a predator. Even now, his white sharp teeth, only inches from her neck, could kill her in an instant.

Of course, he's more than that to her. Worse than that. He's the thing she should have been running from, but ran toward instead.

She relaxes under his touch.

"You caught me a long time ago. Didn't you notice?" She bares her neck to him. It's a familiar gesture, one they repeated over and over again when she was human. The gesture is the same but the meaning has changed. They're both keenly aware of it.

He doesn't take her offer, though he looks tempted.

Carefully, Klaus takes her chin between his fingers and guides her eyes to his. He stares into her eyes for a long while, looking for something. She hopes he finds it.

He was gentle with her like this before the first sacrifice, and he's touched her like this since the completion of the second. And between, she can remember bruises and gashes left in her throat and thighs, even a concussion once. Another thing that has changed between them.

She stares back, caught in this moment with him. She licks her lips, and she cannot help the way her hips roll against him when his eyes dip to her parted lips.

"I suppose I have, at that," he murmurs.

They're gentle with each other that night. It's a new thing they're trying out. His hands glide over her skin, applying on the barest of pressure, and her mouth is soft and fluttering where she touches him. Her quiet, breathy laughter puffs against his throat.

"I've wanted you like this, on the grass beneath the sky, for weeks and weeks now," she tells him.

She can feel his smile against her breast. "I'm well aware, my lovely, _lovely_ girl."

"I think I'm developing a taste for this."

"Hmm?"

"For getting what I want. I so rarely used to."

"And what do you want?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She urges him up her body, so she can kiss him, and accuse him between kisses, "You're making fun of me."

She can feel his smirk, slow and steady, against her mouth. "Have I ever treated you with anything but the utmost serious regard?" he asks, words barely more than breath.

"No, I suppose you haven't."

"Nor do I intend to start."

"But how do you regard me?" she asks, suddenly serious.

He crawls down the length of her body, so that his mouth is pressed against the tender flesh of her stomach, just below her navel. "Let me show you," he murmurs against her skin.

He nudges her underwear out of the way, until she is bare beneath his gaze. Klaus shifts lower, hooking her legs over his shoulder, and pauses with his mouth just over her slit. She feels his breath fan against her clit, making her shiver and twitch, wanting him, as he looks up the length of her body. That dark gaze, like a clear midnight sky, pins her as surely now as his teeth in her throat would have done. It's the heat in that look, the longing and possession and determination to chase after her, that sparks the low heat in her belly, the wetness slicking her entrance. He's still looking right at her when he licks into her, red mouth working her in a pattern and a pressure learned from years of trysts such as these.

Just his eyes on her while he does this is enough to make her cum. She's certain of it. Certain of the pressure that builds inside of her like a spring pulled taught and straight. The second she lets go, the spring will snap and curl, and she will go hurtling forward with it, no control whatsoever of how far or how fast she goes. Her toes curl into his back.

"I want you closer," she tells him. "Inside me—Klaus—will you?" She pulls at his shoulders, drags him back up the length of her body so she can reach his mouth, so her fingers can work at his belt buckle and his fly. He obliges her, _let's_ her drag him up, she knows that, because there is no force left on this earth that could _make_ him do anything—and this is his version of _doting_ on her, of loving her, to accede to her wishes and whims and let her push and pull when it is _absolutely_ in his nature to be the one who dominates. She doesn't care. She's long past _if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with_. She simply loves him, wants him, needs him inside of her _right now_.

He kisses her slowly and thoroughly, his tongue probing into her mouth, tracing along the edges of her teeth and stroking against her tongue, against the insides of her cheek and the seams of her lips. She mimics him, tasting herself on his tongue and on his lips, tangy and ripe. "Careful," he cautions when her tongue flicks past the edge of his too sharp teeth.

The heat between her legs has grown from a steady thrum to a hot pulse, a reverberation of _need need need_. If she were to reach down and touch herself, she would find herself positively drenched, the slickness starting a slow roll down her thighs.

"Right now," she tells him, taking the hard length of him in hand and position him at her entrance. "I need—I want you right now. _Klaus_ —"

He enters her in a slow, deliberate thrust. She feels like the sea must feel parting for a wave, each inch of him pushing her apart, each part of her grappling to sink in around him and hold him within her.

"You're all I ever want, Elena." He smoothes the hair from her face, stares long and dark into her eyes. " _Elena_ , my girl—are you my girl?"

It's such a loaded question—when he says her name, she can still hear something else underneath the familiar lilting vowels—

 _Elena Elena Elena Katerina Katerina Tatia Tatia Tatia_

But that is overridden now. Taken over now. The sea and the wave, rising and parting and reuniting again. She can hear the lap of his words against her ear, the tide of what he means in his heart, what he means truest of all when he says her name—

 _Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena Elena_

—is herself and no other.

She can feel him tense, the muscles in his back hard and tight under her hands, his arms shaking with something other than fatigue. He comes hot inside of her, and the spasming feel of his orgasm sets her off, a fluttering that becomes wave after wave of clenching release.

Klaus stays inside of her afterward, locked between his arms as he looks down at her by moonlight. His mouth is slightly shiny, his hair mussed.

"You never answered my question," he notes. He twines a piece of her hair around his finger like the question is casual, like he doesn't care too much about the answer. Though he has finally averted his gaze from her face, Elena knows that his attention is on her now more than ever.

"Yes," she tells him.

"Yes?"

"I _am_ your girl." She offers it to him like a pledge, her word that she will not break.

* * *

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